Adaptive Camouflage 12

The skewed perspective and deep foreshortening renders the space these nudes occupy, or rather “possess”, disorientating. You are not drawn into the painting, you are not invited. Instead, you find yourself suspended by a nagging sense of exposure and trespass. The atmosphere is one of intense, claustrophobic scrutiny. Furthermore, we are not allowed, as viewers, the comfort of the classical mutual gaze, no “come hither” glances in these encounters, no coy profiles. Instead, we are left abruptly on our own in the dark, at the threshold as it were, by the artist, to consult our ruffled consciences and preconceptions, and to consider perhaps, in the final analysis if it is not we, the viewers, who are, paradoxically, stripped naked by these provocative, discomfiting depictions